2y ago

While you're waiting on a kbin app, you should know the mobile site is entirely functional as a mobile app. Just make a shortcut for your home screen

Apps are always nice, but lots of mobile websites, including the kbin one, are entirely functional as an app. In your browser you can just make a shortcut to them, and they'll appear on your home screen and act as an app.

In technical terms these are Progressive Web Apps, but it means you don't need to wait for someone to write an app (or kbin to have a good API for doing so) to use it like an app on your phone.

In Firefox it looks like this. Open the website, in the menu hit Install, drag the icon to your desktop. When you click on it it'll open the site like it's a standalone app.

Chrome is exactly the same, but the menu button is "Install App" instead.

77 comments

One thing I wish both the desktop and mobile app had was the ability to collapse comment threads. It's handy to just be able to quickly click to collapse a thread at the highest level and move on to the next one. Jerboa has that function for Lemmy, but for some unknown reason they don't allow the user to change comment sorting (eg. top comments). It just forces chronological comment sorting.
Man I wish Relay was available for either Kbin or Lemmy... sigh
- Ask and you shall receive....at least for desktop: https://kbin.social/m/kbinStyles/t/50628/Improved-Collapsible-Comments-Script-that-lets-you-collapse-replies-by
  You will need to install tampermonkey/firemonkey on your browser though
  
  Thanks!
- @PurpleReign As far as I read that is already in development and should come soon.
  @JoeCoT

@JoeCoT
One thing to note, is that it completely ignores your phones rotation settings for android anyways. I have auto-rotate disabled globally on my Pixel, but it still rotates.

one thing is the PWA doesn't respect screen rotation lock for some reason
- I have the same issue and was wondering if It was just me
  
  @CuriousALot @isdfoa
  The reason is that the web manifest has an unnecessary orientation property. A very easy fix. Please go thumbs up this issue and the fix PR so maybe Earnest notices it and we can get back to bedtime threadsurfing sooner 🌝

I just dont like how you can't tell what magazine you're looking at while on mobile.
- You can, you just have to scroll to the bottom of all the comments.
  My apologies, I don't know if you never saw it, there, or if you saw it there and just didn't like it.
  
  does anyone know why I didn't get a notification for this reply? I have the boxes checked off that should allow me to see them.
- You can if you have the top bar enabled. It's to the right of favorites.
  
  For me I have to scroll to the bottom of the threads where you would select a new page and then I have the options like infinite scroll, top bar enabled, etc.

It's fine, but not great. It works in a pinch, but it doesn't feel nearly as smooth/integrated as a native app.

It works alright, but it isn't entirely functional. It took me about 20 tries to actually click on the post on mobile. I have no idea why sometimes trying to come into a post just won't work at all
- Also, at least on iOS, there’s no back button… so after I’m done reading through a post, I would have to click on the header to reload the entire page, thus starting over at the very top of the list of posts
  
  IOS doesn't have a swipe left to go back in safari? Android it runs just like a Firefox page without the url and navigation bar but swiping works fine for me.
  
  Yeah this is my problem with it, too. No back button. The only way out is home (tap on the kbin logo to get the overlay page, then tap on the house). This happens because a shortcut from the home screen eliminates a chunk of the Safari (or in my case Firefox) UI in order to provide an app-like experience.
- I think it's actually from the site errors. When tapping on a post isn't working, I pull up the site on a regular browser and get the 500 errors.
  
  thats my experience also... first time it happened to me was right after a post I made about how kbin just works well... it made me chuckle
- I found that it's really clunky in firefox on Android. I switched to Chrome and it's much smoother and more responsive. I'm not sure why that is though.

For me, my problem with it is that many times I click into s post and when I hit back, it scrolls to the bottom so I lose my place when using infinite scroll. Not sure if there is a fix for that

I've had this set up for a while. It's alright.
Some comments run off the right side of the screen, is there a setting that fixes this?
- The PWA made with Firefox does that for me, but making it with chrome doesn't.
  
  I tried a few different browser and Samsung Internet seems to work the best.
  
  I had the same issues with chrome. The only fix I've found is landscape mode
- Mine was doing that and I realized my font size setting in Android setting was set one size bigger than the middle mark. I moved it one tick to the left and it all fits now.

Yep, used the Chrome "Install App" feature from day 1 and it's been my primary means of accessing KBin. Shoutout to whoever did the mobile CSS, it's not bad at all especially this early on.

It's fine, but not great. It works in a pinch, but it doesn't feel nearly as smooth/integrated as a native app.

Doesn't work well with Firefox mobile as the default browser on Android. I put the app on my home screen but if I switch to Firefox to look at some web page then go back to the "kbin" browser app it's just a blank screen and I have to kill the window then reopen kbin.
- Maybe it's an OS issue? I'm using a Pixel 6a and haven't experienced this.

This is what I'm using and it's a decent experience, especially since you can tweak things to your liking.
- Yeah even with the PWA shortcut you can still use extensions and stuff on it. I had to go back to regular firefox and turn off dark reader for kbin, since it's already a dark theme and it was removing the green color from upvotes
  
  lol I didn't realize it was dark reader I just thought that upvotes were bugged on mobile :D thanks for pointing that out, now I can actually see what I have upvoted
  
  I had to do the same thing after I realized how different the website looks on mobile versus desktop. For something still in early beta, kbin is very well put together.

It seems I'm the only one who seems to get logged out from one visit to the next...?
Even if I don't close my mobile browser/tab; if I've not been active on it for some hours (haven't yet worked out what the cutoff is), I find I have to login again.
Happens on both Firefox and Brave for Android.
- Happens to me too - I click the 'remember me' option but it never does. Hopefully a mobile app will be better.
- It happens to me, as well, on Safari for iPhone, even with the "remember" check box selected. Oddly enough, I have an account on a different Kbin server, and it keeps me logged in.

With a few scripts, got my Kbin to looks like this: https://streamable.com/6tknlu
Although have to use it in browser.

I've been use the PWA for a while now and its fine. The only thing I really miss is is pull to refresh, but I found you can just use the hamburger menu at the top to refresh

It has issues with font scaling unfortunately and as a Relay user I really miss the navigational gestures / features. Tapping on every tiny link is tedious on a phone.

I’ve been using Kbin as a web app for a while. Sometimes the text goes off the screen and I can’t see it. Also, if I accidentally open a menu, there doesn’t to be a way to close it unless I just tap on one of the options.
- Same, on my phone the menus don't close.

I'm using it with Brave, very pleased.

Works pretty well as a web app on iOS. :)

If you are using iOS and Safari, adding the icon to Home Screen prevents Safari extensions from running in my experience. So if you’re using any of the Userscripts or user styles like the collapsible comment script, they won’t work. Took me a while to figure out why they weren’t working. Visiting from the browser works with the scripts and styles, obviously.
- Out of curiosity, which extension do you use to add these extra scripts?
  
  I am just using an app called "Usercripts" right now. I bought Hyperweb a while back but it wasn't seeming to work for me. If you can get that one to work it's a pretty good (but expensive) all-in-one solution that includes userscripts, userstyles, ad and tracking blocking, URL redirect, custom search tags, etc.

I've been using it this way for a bit. It works pretty well, and I like that I don't have to open it in Safari all of the time. Took me a while to figure out where all of the links were, but I'm still new kbin and the whole fediverse thing so it's all a learning curve.

ah yes, a accessible mobile website, not like some other platform...

I've done this in Firefox on iOS but sadly the browser's back and forward arrows are not available and... I miss them!
- @rasterweb
  @JoeCoT
  The PWA works with mobile Safari and the swipe back/forward motion takes you back and forth. Try that with Firefox

It fails at respecting my screen's orientation lock on Android, so when in bed it kept rotating to landscape and that was extremely annoying, so had to remove it.
- @RodPhoto Hopefully we get this fixed soon, it's just a one line change🤞
  
  Ah, there it is! Thanks for reporting it, I'm glad it's in the queue.
- I'm using Firefox beta on MIUI 12.5 (Android 11) and I never had this problem.
  I would try another browser.
  
  Interesting, I'm also on MIUI 12.5 but I'm using Brave. Not really willing to change my browser for this, so I'll just wait. Thanks for the info, though!

I've been using the website on brave on my phone and it appears absolutely fine! The only issue is that I think brave blocks the image up loader apart from that all good!

Can’t pull up to refresh though

It has a lot of display quirks though. Hopefully it improves

I visit here on my PC, but this is what I do for Mastodon on my phone, and it works great.

I’ve found the webpage-based nature of this site does work really well, but only really on Safari on iOS. Other browsers for iOS seem a bit buggy.

77 comments